A controversial patent registered by Sony has been discovered, sparking suggestions that the Japanese electronics company are looking to develop a way to force adverts into video games, under a method which could be applied in other forms of visual media.

The patent outlines plans to provide an ‘Advertisement scheme for use with interactive content’, and while being filed in July 2011 (and officially granted in November), it is now being strongly rumoured that the proposal will make an active debut on the planned ‘Sony PlayStation 4′.

The system is noted as working by slowing down within the game being played, including an on-screen warning light that acts as an indication of what is to come. From there, the game will fade into the background with the advert coming into a full-screen view, with the video clip or still taking up the view for a set amount of time, before the process ends the way it started, with a warning that the game is about to come back into action.

There are also suggested plans to ‘counter’ any game-related problems by offering the option of ‘rewinding’ the game a set amount if the advert interrupts the game in a significant way, though that will not go down well either with people who have to re-do a ‘hard part’.

Meanwhile, those that think they would be able to get away from the process by playing online multiplayer games would be wrong, as Sony have listed an even more marketable proposal for that situation, with the game pausing at specific points in order to show all players involved the advert, something that could end up amplifying the symptoms of ‘angry gamer syndrome’, should the patented plans be implemented (though it is likely that with the development of ‘smart TV’ methods, the adverts would be more relevant to the game/demographic in question).

It is believed that Sony have come up with their patent as a response to similar ‘pop-up ads’ seen on free-to-download tablet computer and smartphone games, but would the home console adverts be used as a trade-off for a lower cost of a console or device?

With the plans already described for video game consoles, Sony also list DVD players and personal DVRs as further potential outlets for the advertising method, meaning that it is not too far away from putting adverts into the middle of live TV at unexpected points. Just as DVR sets such as TiVo had looked to have removed the viewer’s inconvenience of adverts, could Sony be close to developing a way of putting them back in? The real question here, though, is whether ‘Best Brand Soda’ will see a sales increase as a result of all this publicity…